


Break Glass - Emergency

by gandalfthesassy



Category: photography - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-25
Updated: 2013-11-25
Packaged: 2018-01-02 15:41:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1058572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gandalfthesassy/pseuds/gandalfthesassy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Break glass in case of emergency.” That was what the sign said. And it wasn’t an emergency.</p>
<p>At least, that's what Ginny believes, but she soon discovers that there's more to the glass-front box than meets the eye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Break Glass - Emergency

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Emergency](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/31286) by JB Knibbs. 



“Break glass in case of emergency.” That was what the sign said. And it wasn’t an emergency.

Looking at the art pieces was one of the most boring things I’d done in a long time. And it really had been a while since I’d gone to any art shows. This one, however, people were really talking about. They say that some of the art pieces were _alive._

I didn’t believe them.

In this particular photograph by a woman named JB Knibbs, a well-lit young woman was sitting pretty in a glass-windowed alcove. Thing is, she was the sort of pretty that I’d been looking for in a friend (not to mention a lover), but she seemed rather off-putting for some reason. She had a teal-ish blue dress and bluer hair that fell to one side. Her gloveless fingers perched under her chin, holding her head up. Her head stayed cocked to the same side that her hair fell, and she stared with hazel-green eyes at passersby. When I moved, her eyes seemed to move as well.

_Ah, I’m probably paranoid,_ I told myself. The same thing happened when I saw the Mona Lisa in person. Well it wasn’t the real Mona Lisa, but still, it was _creepy._ All eyes are creepy. But this one…well, this photo greatly unnerved me. She looked pleasant. Too pleasant, like she was forcing it. I hate when people, like, pretend to be happy when they’re not. If you need me to change a situation, why not just _tell_ me? I do that to people.

That might explain why I’m hard to befriend.

Also, notably, she had two white fingerless gloves. On her right arm, it went halfway up her lower arm and stopped. The other continued almost to her puffy sleeves.

My eyes went back to hers. She looked content. But then again, her eyes yelled at me, but for what? What did she want from me? I caught myself mouthing the question and chuckled nervously at passersby, but they didn’t understand why I was laughing at myself. I guess I looked foolish, standing in front of a girl in a box and _laughing_ at it. Well, to each his own, I suppose.

“Ginny!”

Drawn from the picture’s entrancing figure, I turned to find a friend of mine running up, a woman about my age named Alex. She adjusted her glasses and glanced at the photo, making a sort of ‘huh’ noise.

“Ginny, the others have moved on,” she reported. “They’re wondering where you are.”

“They are? What about you?”

“I knew you’d be staring at something, really,” she smirked. “And you know, this isn’t a bad photo to stare at.”

“Alex--!”

“What? I’m just saying. She’s pretty cute. Though she’s a bit scary, isn’t she?”

“Yeah. Anyway, let’s go.” Anything to pull myself away from the picture’s gaze. Why was it suddenly very, very real to me? I followed Alex into the next art exhibit.

Fifteen minutes or so later, a few people were standing around the picture I stared at before. “What’s going on?” I asked generally.

A man with wispy gray hair answered immediately. “The picture’s changed, we think. What do you think?”

I stared at the picture. It had changed, and quite a bit, too. It was of the same woman in the same box with the same blue floppy hair. But now she had her nose, top of her head, and her hands pressed against the glass. Realistic though it was, what struck me were three things. Firstly, she no longer had her dress on. Instead, she had an ace bandage wrapped around her torso, from her waist up to her breasts, and she leaned forward so that nothing fell to the imagination. Along with that, she had ‘nude’ colored underwear on. She had a rather realistic figure, I thought, but that wasn’t what caught me off guard. Secondly, the ‘gloves’ I had seen on her hands were not, in fact, gloves. They were also bandages. Thirdly, and this was probably the most noticeable for me, she looked exhausted, terrified. Her eyes bore into mine with a new intensity, no longer the idle glance of a bored young woman, but instead she seemed to be crying for help without words.

“Yes, I do think it’s a little different. It was much nicer before,” I attempted to make conversation.

The man who spoke to me shrugged. “You can’t ever tell with these ones. One minute you look and you see something lovely, then you look again to find something horribly grotesque. Not her, of course, she is rather pretty, isn’t she?”

I found a defensive feeling welling up in my chest. “Yes, she is.”

“Ah, well. I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you know, the girl in the picture will probably get someone to help her out.”

“It’s just a picture,” I scoffed, “am I supposed to pretend that she’s going to be fine?”

“Maybe,” he shrugged again. “Maybe she will be fine, and maybe it is just a picture. But if this change is any indication,” he spoke as if he could see exactly what I saw, “she wants help. And her gaze intensified when _you_ came over, young lady.”

“What, did an alien lady pick me or something for a vessel?”

“I don’t think she’s the alien. You wanna know something else that’s strange?” I didn’t turn away from the photo, but I nodded. “After she submitted these pictures to the gallery, Miss Knibbs went missing. No one knows where she went. She was just gone. I wonder where she went.” I turned to question him further, since he seemed to know a lot more than others who just passed by, but he was gone.

That was it, then. I had to face the picture by myself.

The museum stayed open a little late that night for members of some club that my mother had been a part of. She donated some obscene amount of money to keep the place open, and so they granted her a lifetime membership. When she couldn’t walk anymore, she gave me her membership. It was pretty easy to make the change for the staff because, well, we have the same name. I remarked to myself how convenient the whole thing was as I passed the picture again. But this time, it was much, much different.

I stood in front of the picture. There was no light shining on it; the light, in fact, was coming from the painting itself. Spooky, if not clever. I wondered how exactly this photographer made the photo itself glow so strongly. But now, the woman was not facing me. She held a marker with a yellow cap on the non-writing end and was writing a word. It must have been the word that was scrawled in different sizes and intensities around the three walls that weren’t glass: emergency.

Something was seriously up.

She had the same outfit, of course, but she was hunched over in her work. I could almost feel the desperation in her repetitive writing. Her hair appeared less blue and instead looked black, more natural than before, and I believed that this was her natural state, and I felt horrible for just standing and watching. This was the first time I noticed how frail she was, and I cringed.

This was slowly becoming less of a purposeful art piece and some kind of cruel joke on its viewers.

“Okay, very funny!” I turned around, calling to no one. Even now, the staff had gone away, so I was left alone. “Whoever’s changing these pictures when I’m not looking, you can stop now.”

I trailed off when I looked at the picture again. She did not look at me, but I could see the fear and the desperation in her eyes. With a nail on her right hand, she was scratching out the second line of the sign in front of her. Her other hand once again pressed against the glass.

“What on Earth…?” I said softly, my hand involuntarily reaching for her own. I stopped myself. “What do you want _me_ to do? I don’t have anything that I can do. God, I’m not a superman, and if you’re looking for one, I’m not yours. You’re not even that cute, anyway. What am I doing? I’m talking to a damn picture,” I scolded myself. “I should be home, writing.” Just then, I swear I saw the picture _blink_.

Maybe it wasn’t a picture. Maybe this was real.

Disbelief began to cloud my thoughts, but I brushed it away. This had become too serious to be ignored. The woman in this picture needed help, and the only person around to give it was me.

I glanced away for a moment. When I looked back, it had changed once again. She sat in her original position, hands tucked under her chin, but her hair stuck out in all sorts of places and she didn’t have her dress. The edges of her bandages frayed out. Her eyes, if they had been yelling at me earlier, were screaming in horror. I followed the direction that her head was cocked and noticed what the sign said.

‘Break Glass (scratched out) Emergency.’

Break the glass? But _how_? “Like I told you,” I said aloud, forgetting how crazy I must’ve looked, “I’m not a superman.” Still, she stared at me. I involuntarily reached forward for the picture.

Cool glass met my touch.

So this wasn’t a picture at all. It was a window, and this woman could only move for certain periods of time. I had so many questions, mostly involving how she got in there in the first place, but I blocked them out when I realized that it didn’t matter in the least.

She needed _my_ help.

Thinking quickly, I moved to the side to see just how thick the glass was. It wasn’t too thick for bullets, but I unfortunately didn’t have any, and it was too thick for a finger to shatter. But what was there here to use?

I dug into my trenchcoat pocket and found the baseball I’d caught at Yankee Stadium when I was in New York a few weeks before.

I prayed for a decent throwing arm as I backed up and aimed for the glass, trying to avoid hitting her. My arm shot out, chucking the ball faster than I’d ever thrown it before. I blame the adrenaline.

Shattered glass spilled out in front of me, and I stumbled back, accidentally tripping myself. When I recovered, jumping up, there was the woman that had stared at me so strongly.

“Hello?” I asked her, running through the broken glass (and thanking God that I had shoes on). “Are you alright? God, you look awful…”

“Thanks,” she spoke for the first time. Man, she was hoarse. I held out my arms to her.

“Come on,” I offered. “There’s glass under my feet, so I’ll carry you. Don’t want you cutting yourself after…well, all that.”

She smiled thankfully and accepted. She was a lot heavier than I expected, but I managed to carry her just past the edge of the glass remains. When I helped her down, her bare feet made a gentle _thump_ on the hardwood floor.

“Are you JB Knibbs?” I had to ask.

She nodded. “Yeah.” 

“How did you get yourself into that picture?”

“It’s sort of a funny story,” she chuckled. “In trying to pose for the pictures, I literally was _in_ them.”

“I guessed that, but how?”

“I don’t know exactly how it happened…one minute, I was in the box, then I couldn’t get out of it. After taking the first picture, I tried to open the box to take off my dress, but well, I couldn’t. Somehow I ended up in that museum, staring out at people, wondering who would be daring enough to break the glass. But no one was getting. When you came back the second time, I knew you’d get me out, but I could tell that you were at a loss for how.”

“So you could hear me?”

“Yeah, I could, and I felt bad.”

“I felt worse,” I assured her.

“Well, I found myself without the dress when you came back. Not quite sure how that happened. But you kept looking, and that guy kept talking to you…”

“Who was he, anyway?”

“No idea. But he knew about me. He knew I was stuck. Maybe he didn’t have the strength to get me out, and you did.”

“Good! Now you’re free. And you’re probably cold.” Goosebumps rose all over her skin. “Here,” I took off my own coat—of all the days to wear a trenchcoat, I picked this one—and draped it over her shoulders.

“How gentlemanly of you,” she joked. “But won’t you be cold?”

“Nah, I’m fine. Where do you live?”

“Not that far away. It’s within walking distance. Hope you’re prepared for snow.”

“I hope _you’re_ prepared, dude, you don’t even have shoes on.”

She grinned ruefully. “I’ll be fine, I promise.”

“Alright, lead the way.”

Ignoring the stares of the few people who passed us, I let JB lead me to where she lived, where I took back my coat and waved ‘bye’ to her.

The next day, when I arrived at the museum, there were ropes around the former picture. “What happened?” I asked again. And there was the man who had hinted at me the day before.

“The woman in the picture escaped.” He glanced at me knowingly. “She’s gone home.”

“Good! She looked lonely in there.” With a sudden lengthening of my spine, I left the museum to find reporters upon reporters swarming the front doors. A few pulled me aside and asked me what part I had. I told them the truth: I got her out. I found myself shaking the hand of the city mayor as he presented me with a medal, but I didn’t care so much about that.

I wondered how many of those other photos I’d seen in museums were actually people trapped in time. Could I save them? Well, for now, I’d saved one, and all because I broke the glass. 

**Author's Note:**

> Taking a break from my NaNoWriMo to write this little thing, based off of this series of photos: http://gandalfthesasssy.tumblr.com/post/68078214482/neil-gaiman-luminarystudies-emergency-by-jb
> 
> JB Knibbs is a really awesome photographer, and I'm not sure if photography is really a fandom but, well, it's a short story based off some photos. So there.


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